Her groceries were delivered every week and left on the back step.
She never parted the curtains, just gazed through them, so only a hazy, spectral form could be seen by anyone interested enough to look. They knew she’d been living alone since her husband had died, never went out, and was only rarely seen peering from behind lace curtains. In fact, the only interest that had ever been shown by others was on the day they took the old woman away. A few windows had been shattered by the neighbourhood kids, but even they lost interest when nothing more than silence responded to the crash of broken glass. No one went there, nobody showed much interest anymore.
It stood, detached and faded, next to a disused canal, away from the road, screened by foliage gone wild. The old house had been empty for more than a year.
